A friend who was opening a restaurant was offered the following advice: “Be very conservative with your opening date, factor in everything that could hold you up, and then whatever the latest possible date you can foresee being the opening, add another month. Things will go wrong.” Apparently, this is sound advice for people creating Kickstarter campaigns as well. (Read More)

I’ve been following Oculus Rift since the Kickstarter a couple years back, and while I didn’t help kickstart the project it has always been an intriguing idea. Of course Oculus ended up being purchased for a large chunk of cash and VC funding, but that’s a different story. Having tested DevKit 1 and DevKit 2, I was really interested to see what changes have been made with the latest prototype. The short answer is that ventilation has improved (less fogging up of the glasses), the display resolution is now higher, the screen refreshes faster, tracking is better, and combined with the VR Audio the experience is more immersive than ever. (Read More)

It happens every time I strap on the Oculus Rift. Whether the amazing head-tracking wonder that is the DK2 unit or even the earlier model, I'm completely sucked into a new virtual world. Then I look down and my hands and...nothing. Oculus VR seems to understand the frustration and is taking steps toward developing hand tracking for the Rift by snatching up motion capture startup Nimble VR. (Read More)

Wearable device companies have raised at least $38.5 million on crowdfunding sites Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and 3D printing companies at least $25.6 million, according to calculations by Matt Witheiler, general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. The statistic includes more than 80 companies that have raised more than $100,000. (Read More)

Kickstarter has a reputation of being an abundant funding source for burgeoning wearable tech companies. Pebble and Oculus Rift both got their bearings on Kickstarter. However, L2’s Intelligence Report: Wearables finds a large funding gap among the 50 wearables projects on the platform. Only 6 in 10 reach their funding target, and the average Kickstarter wearable campaign achieves 399% of its funding goal. Further emphasizing the gap between the haves and the have nots: successful projects receive 692% of their funding goal, while failed ones receive just 14%. (Read More)

'You backed them. You made them. Now play them.' With that rallying cry, Kickstarter wants to direct our attention to more than 100 crowd-funded games which started as developer dreams and emerged as publicly playable product. (Read More)

Crowdfunding has barely been out of the information within the final 5 years. It has helped to propel the maker motion and foster innovation in all kinds of fields, not least know-how. The power for artistic varieties to attraction to bizarre individuals to fund their nice concepts and assist make them a actuality is thrilling. (Read More)

Venture capitalists don't tend to pledge $20 at a time to a scrappy little startup. They look for big investments with big returns. But some are turning to Kickstarter for that next big idea. (Read More)

While crowdfunding is older than the Statue of Liberty in New York — which incidentally needed crowdfunding from the American and French people — the advent of web 2.0 and internet-mediated platforms has caused crowdfunding to gain a lot of traction in the last few years. We all know that Kickstarter is the most prominent crowdfunding platform. Past year, the internet community has crowd funded lots of innovative tech projects. The Oculus Rift, Pebble, Ouya and more. But which of those are the most successful? (Read More)

Kickstarter can be a brilliant thing. As an innovative website that lets people pitch product ideas and have fans pledge donations of their choosing, it makes all kinds of unique videogames, peripherals and just about everything else possible when investor’s risk assessments don’t turn out favourably. Not to mention that it allows creators to retain complete control of their vision and, for better or worse, reduces financial pressures upon those makers. (Read More)

You’ve most likely already read about the whole Facebook buying Oculus VR situation. The popular-yet-hated social media company purchased the makers of the much buzzed about Rift virtual reality helmet this week for $2 Billion, much to the frustration of gamers across the internet. Fears of advertisements, casual games, and draconian practices have been running rampant in forums and editorials. So what do the staff of Cliqist, lovers of all things crowdfunded, think about the Kickstarter darlings over at Oculus selling out less than two years after raising $2.4mil from a collection of nearly 10,000 backers? (Read More)

There are many people out there who take a pessimistic view of Facebook. To them, Mark Zuckerberg is a huckster, out to sell us the snake oils of distraction and dopamine in exchange for our eyeballs and personal data. I take the more optimistic view. (Read More)

With the recent controversy and explosion of commentary on the recent acquisition of VR headset Oculus Rift by Facebook, many developers and those in the gaming community were very vocal about their stance on the topic and the news of the purchase. What is development studio Twinbeard’s solution? Buy back Oculus Rift from Facebook. (Read More)

When Carlos Schulte contributed $300 on Kickstarter to an ambitious project called the Oculus Rift, he never expected this day to come. It’s doubtful anyone did—Oculus VR, the company behind the virtual reality headset, was only asking for $250,000 in its crowdfunding campaign during the summer of 2012. Back then, it was a scrappy startup with a small but passionate base of supporters. Now, it’s a multi-billion-dollar company about to be owned by Facebook. (Read More)

Following the major news that Facebook had bought out Oculus, we’ve now learned of the first entity that intends on buying the VR headset developer back. The company in question is none other than one-man indie outfit Twinbeard Studios. (Read More)

CES 2014 was packed with devices from fledgling companies that relied on crowdfunding to get off the ground, as well as growing manufacturers like Pebble showing the potential of Kickstarter success. (Read More)

Rewards based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is up for the Best Overall Startup of 2013 Crunchie Award. This is the 7th Annual event which is put together by TechCrunch along with partners GigaOm and VentureBeat. One of five, Kickstarter is competing with heavyweights CloudFlare, Snapchat, Twitter and Uber for the top award. (Read More)

We've spent gobs of time with variations of Oculus VR's Rift headset -- the original duct-tape prototype, the first dev kit and even an updated HD version. We've spoken to creator Palmer Luckey several times, and company reps have graced Engadget stages at both CES 2013 and last March's first-ever Expand event in San Francisco. (Read More)

Pledges for video game-related projects on Kickstarter have now surpassed $200 million, according to the latest statistics published by the crowdfunding platform. A little over $178 million funded successful campaigns, while the remaining $19.85 million was returned to backers. (Read More)

Coming from the bastion of traditional media know as Time is a listicle outlining the “25 Best Inventions of the Year 2013″ which unsurprisingly includes several crowdfunded projects. Now I must point out that the paper and ink crew at Time may be a bit premature in their prognosis of hot inventions as last I checked 2013 has not yet ended but I guess they wanted to get a jump on things. (Read More)

Oculus VR is a crowdfunding darling, having raised a $16 million Series A round on top of another $2.4 million on Kickstarter. Now the virtual reality gaming headset manufacturer is gearing up for primetime in the form of a new, consumer-spec headset that the team says will support 4K resolution for full HD gameplay. (Read More)

Websites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo are changing the way that products are developed. We look at the top five crowdfunded innovations: the Pebble Watch, Ouya, Oculus Rift, GoldieBlox, and Double Fine Adventure. (Read More)

For months now, I've been reading raves for Oculus Rift, the virtual-reality gaming headset that's among the most famous Kickstarter projects. One of them came from my own colleague Lev Grossman. Like many folks, he got downright giddy after receiving a demo. (Read More)

In light of the PS4's surprising addition to its console, the popular virtual reality project Oculus Rift has shown signs of improvement in terms of motion sickness issues. To date, one of the biggest challenges of the device is the reports of nausea and motion sickness that wearers tend to experience after being exposed to it. (Read More)

For a while in the late 1980s and 1990s virtual reality gaming systems were popular in video arcades, but attempts to produce a consumer-targeted version repeatedly failed. Earlier this month a virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift, secured its target of $250,000 (£160,200) on crowd-funding site Kickstarter. (Read More)

In an Interview with the Eurogamer website this week, Oculus VR the development team behind the awesome Kickstarter funded explained that their Oculus Rift might be launching on to Android devices in the near future. (Read More)

WHEN in August 2012 Palmer Luckey, the inventor of the Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality gaming peripheral, asked for financing on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website, he was hoping to raise just $250,000. Instead, nearly 10,000 people gave him a total of $2.4m to get his device ready for the mass market. Now Mr Luckey has even more cash to play with: his company recently announced it had raised a further $16m of funding from venture capitalists. (Read More)

First there was the Kickstarter campaign that blew away the $250,000 goal, topping $2.4 million pledged from more than 9,500 private project backers. Now, with several high-profile venture capital firms ponying up an additional $16 million in support, the Oculus Rift inches one step closer toward bringing immersive virtual reality to consumers. (Read More)

Established in 2009, Kickstarter, the website is helping the world to raise funds for creative projects via crowd funding. As the creativity is largely unbound, so is Kickstarter. It funds everything and anything creative from films, food, fashion, games, technology and myriad others. (Read More)

The Oculus Rift company is barely one year old, but it's already off to a strong start. Developers have kits from a massively successful Kickstarter campaign, said kit has support from the industry's biggest game engine creators, and the consumer-friendly HD version is already being shown off to press (we loved what we saw at E3 2013 last week). (Read More)

Somehow, porn managed not to be the first thing folks started putting on the Oculus Rift when the VR simulator headset started going out to developers. Well, wait no longer. Someone is building "the world's first erotic virtual reality adventure game" for it. (Read More)

Oculus Rift made a big splash at E3 2013 last week. The company, which began as a Kickstarter campaign, is working to perfect the concept of virtual reality gaming with their headset that immerses the person wearing it in a virtual world they can explore in 360 degrees as they turn their head. (Read More)

The latest revolution in gaming may not be something related to in-home consoles or the much-hyped Google Glass. It may well come from a 20-year-old former journalism student who left Cal State Long Beach to focus on a longtime buzzword whose day may finally have come: virtual reality. (Read More)

The pedestrian who was struck and killed during a police chase in Santa Ana was identified Friday as 33-year-old Andrew Scott Reisse. Coworkers described him as a "brilliant mind." Reisse, a Santa Ana resident, was walking in a crosswalk when he was struck and killed at the end of a police chase Thursday. Reisse's father, who lives in Virginia, said his son moved to Southern California about a year ago. Reisse co-founded Oculus VR in Irvine, a company known for its virtual reality headsets for immersive gaming. (Read More)

In a recent Does Not Compute, we discussed (well, I discussed AT you, which is by far my favorite way to interact) Kickstarter ideas so terrible, they failed to raise any money or attract a single backer. Shattered dreams = hilarious! I also plugged my own Kickstarter, which, now that I think about it, probably wasn't the best mental association I could have gone for. (Read More)

Every start up needs the right source of finance to turn that dream into reality. The funding of creative projects has always been major concerns for entrepreneurs looking forward to kick start their ventures. Such start ups often find themselves at crossroads. Kickstarter, a private for profit... (Read More)

Kickstarter reports that its 2.2 million members pledged more than $319 million in 2012, up 221 percent from the year before. But more striking, perhaps, is the scale of some of Kickstarter’s latest success stories. While no project had raised $1 million at this time last year, 17 projects passed that mark in 2012. (Read More)

They said the wristwatch was dead, but they were wrong. Forward-thinking watches are making a big splash at this year’s CES, the largest technology trade show in the country, and two watches... (Read More)

Kickstarter is rapidly becoming one of the most talked-about websites on the internet. Designed to give inventors and entrepreneurs around the world the chance to gain investment from anyone, it has already seen several success stories. (Read More)

Crowdfunding site Kickstarter launched in April, 2009, and has revolutionized investment ever since. Through micro-funding, the platform managed to turn the internet into an online hub for raising money in small increments from the general public in support of a cause, product or project. In other words, suddenly, backing startups wasn’t just for venture capitalists, it was for everyman (and woman). (Read More)